The Sixth Western Novel

by Jackson Gregory

  Mad enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two, raring to get their fists in somebody’s face, their thumbs in someone’s eyes and their claws in someone’s hair, they found no one to fight. Baffled fury was the name of the explosive in the breasts of Curly and Bud. As for Bill Dorn, he had gone white with rage. He knew beyond argument that this was Mike Bundy’s work, yet there was no Mike Bundy at hand to charge with it.

  And then, all of a sudden, there was Mike Bundy, looming large among the rest, rubbing his eyes, demanding, “What the hell?”

  Bill Dorn charged at him like a young bull down a green springtime pasture. All the ideas that Lorna Kent—if that was her name—had put into his hot head, all the things that had sprouted and grown from her planting, were swept clean away by his gusty young wrath.

  “So there’s nothing too small for you to do,” he roared at Bundy before he was within striking distance. “I know damn well that this is your work, and don’t try to lie out of it!”

  Mike Bundy had no time to lie out of anything. Bill Dorn’s clubbed fist took him under the square jaw, and Bundy went down like a tree falling. But he came up fast enough and a gun was in his hand. He said, in a deadly, cold voice: “I’m tired playing with you, Dorn. Every man here knows you’re out to kill me, despite the things you’ve said by way of a smoke screen. Fill your hand, you yellow dog.”

  That was the second time Bundy had called him that. Dorn yanked out the gun sagging heavy at his belt. Thus the thing started like a play of spontaneous combustion. It ended just as fast. For all of a sudden, out of a mob of wide-eyed, slack-jawed standers-by a small nucleus of purposeful men emerged in full action, taking destiny into their own hands. They were that small, tight, hard-bitten lot who had understood Dorn’s point-of-view of yesterday and who meant to keep Mike Bundy alive and in circulation, blow high, blow low—Stock Morgan and Ken Fairchild, Middleton and John Sharp and Duke Jones, all of Dorn’s compact little band of anti-Bundy henchmen excepting the irate Curly and Bud, just now forgetful of everything except that their wagons had been fired and that someone ought to be beat to a jelly for the offense. The five, however, were sufficient for the occasion. Again a fight between Dorn and Bundy came to an abrupt end with nothing decided. Morgan and Duke Jones dragged Bundy’s gun arm down; Fair-child and Sharp and Middleton hung like leeches on Bill Dorn. And Dorn, his head clearing instantly, said, though sounding surly: “All right boys. You’re right, of course.”

  The next day Bill Dorn witnessed the birth of the bawling, squalling brat of a town that came inevitably to be called County Line. For a short time, under Bundy’s shadow, it was known as Bundy’s Town, but it, like Bill Dorn and others, drew its nicknames rapidly, and the one that stuck was County Line.

  For Bill Dorn a first triumph lay in the disposal of the contents of his string of freight wagons. Down in Liberty old Cap Jinks had bought shrewdly out of an ancient knowledge; more than just that, he had marked the various and rather breath-taking selling prices of his goods in the same flourishing way he had created the sign against trespass that he had nailed to a Palm Ranch gate post. His letters and figures were big and black and arresting. There was raw lumber for shacks or their frames, and rawer liquor for dusty throats; there were picks and shovels and boots and sides of bacon and red beans by the hefty bag. You could step up and take away what you liked, but at a price. And what a price! Still one had to admit that the supply was limited, the demand urgent, and that the goods had been hauled many a weary mile across desert and rocky hill. The way that Cap Jenks had things figured out, “When you need it bad, a ten penny nail’s worth jest as much as if it was made out’n gold.”

  Men who had money bought freely and never raised a voice against the cost. Those who had no money shrugged their shoulders and did without, yet it was noticeable that they soon vanished from camp. Some of them were scratching the surfaces of their claims, hoping to turn up a spot of color, a vein in the rock or a nugget they could knock free, that would buy them what they wanted.

  There is an old Scotch story which in this connection will bear repeating. Twenty Scotch sailors, arrived in port, sent one of their number ashore to buy provisions. Each man gave him a dollar. He returned with twenty bottles of whisky and one loaf of bread. They upbraided him, yelling at him, “Why the hell, mon, did ye get a’ that bread?”

  Cap Jinks, knowing his way up and down the thirsty country, sent an abundance of fiery liquor. It was sold by the gallon, nothing less. The liquor sales alone paid the whole expense of the freighting and costs, and set aside a neat profit of seven hundred dollars.

  The camp fell apart as neatly as a ripe peach. The place split on Mike Bundy. His camp it was, to be sure; he had his followers, most of them hirelings, and he had as bitter enemies as any man who ever walked as a pirate captain on his own deck in the sun and felt a cold shadow over him. There was Silver Creek, amiably at hand; on the north for the most part were the Bundy men, making their shacks, raising frames for canvas, throwing down their bed rolls, while across that slight silvery liquid barrier other men, not of Bundy’s persuasion, were swift in establishing themselves. And both sheriffs, MacArthur and Slobby Martinez, scratched their heads and hoped for the best. Sooner or later they’d have to have a surveyor or two up here. Between themselves, pacing along divergent lines, they strove to establish the county boundary, yet both in the end admitted they didn’t know right exac’ly where’n hell it was.

  Before nightfall Mike Bundy shot up a big pavilion of sorts, a place where a plank bar stood ready to dispense drinks—whisky only, but who wanted anything else?—and to offer under coal oil lamps a varied assortment of games of chance—poker, faro, seven up, even a warped roulette table which the knowing ones gave a wide berth. The damned thing looked as crooked as it really was. Then came the dance hall girls he had brought up from the border. As Dorn had already said, Bundy wasn’t overlooking a bet anywhere along the line. By dusk the camp was giddy. By full dark it was roistering. Before midnight a young fellow named Sandy Bucknaw had killed a man named Pete Manton, and the fairly young woman who had been in her irresponsible way responsible sickened and fainted, and a squad of Pete Manton’s friends hung poor bedeviled Sandy from a handy pine—and in unsober fact County Line was an entity. The town was born. Alive and kicking, as they said in that day of the newly arrived here on earth.

  “It’s going to be one of the big gold towns of the West,” men said early in the history of County Line. And all day and for many a day men kept pouring in, as they do always when gold is found. They came along in a swelling tide, on foot, on horse and muleback, in wagons and top buggies; and one lithe, blithe, sunny chap came swinging in on crutches. All of them, under their sweaty shirts, seemed to wear wings.

  “Let’s you and me go jump in the crick and drown ourselves,” Sheriff MacArthur suggested to Sheriff Martinez. Martinez only sighed.

  Bill Dorn, one thought only in his mind, sought out Stock Morgan, found him and John Sharp with their heads together, and presently had all his small group about him. He said: “Look here. This thing is apt to be big. Gold comes up out of the ground, then goes into men’s pockets, then streaks on through. The town is here already. You’ve got your claims already. Next, grab some spots that look like street corners—places for stores, for a hotel, for a stable and blacksmith shop. All that sort of thing. If you’ll throw in with me we’ll form some sort of a company; we’ll drive a wedge into Bundy’s plans, a fist into his belly. And all you fellows from Antelope to the Villaga ranch wall get back some and maybe all that you have lost through my damfool advice. It’s the town that’s going to pay, not the gold mining; that’s the way it always goes. I can see it as plain as a new tin can shining in the sunlight.”

  Bundy came over to them; he looked steadily at Dorn a moment, then demanded:

  “Do you think there’s going to be room here in this town for the two of us?”

  Dorn answered him coolly:
“Yes. It’s going to be big enough, spread-eagle all you please.”

  “I know what you’re up to,” said Bundy, looking stormy yet speaking smoothly enough. “Name your price, get out and I’ll pay you.”

  Dorn meditated. “I can take my losses,” he said after a while. “In the first place, I’m used to it; then it serves me right. But there are a lot of folks I dragged along down with me. I’d say offhand that about a quarter of a million dollars in cash would square the count.”

  Bundy pretended to search through his pockets. “Must have flipped it over the table to one of the new dance hall girls,” he said, and stalked away. But before he had gone ten steps he spun about and came back. This time he spoke over Dorn’s head, at Stock Morgan.

  “You, Morgan,” he said, “used to carry a pretty level head on those chunky shoulders of yours. Most of these boys, I think, would listen to you if you had anything to say to them. You can chip in with me right now and ride high; or you can stick with Here-We-Go Dorn, and crack up.”

  “You c’n go to hell, Mike Bundy,” said Morgan.

  Bundy shrugged.

  “Have it your way. Only the gate’s open if you change your mind. And to stick a flea in your ear, here’s this: Palm Ranch is as good as mine right now. The girl down there is a fake. The real heiress to all old lady Kent’s holdings—and that’s mostly mortgages to me—is down at the hotel in Liberty. I’ve had a talk with her already; she’s got proof with her that she’s Lorna Kent; she’s scared half to death, and I can buy her out for a hundred dollars. Roost on that egg overnight, Morgan; see what you hatch out, and come to me when you’re ready. I’m in no hurry.”

  With that he sauntered off. Morgan turned somber, questioning eyes on Bill Dorn. And all that Dorn could do was shake his head and get up and go about his business. His affair was, first of all, the purchase of some more horses, and he learned from his friends that they might be had, such as he required, down in Antelope Valley. Ken Fairchild rode away to buy them and convoy them to Palm Ranch. Then Dorn went on his next errand.

  It was to Liberty. If there was a girl down there who said she was Lorna Kent, if she had proof of her contention as Bundy averred, Bill Dorn wanted a word with her. On his way, he stopped briefly at Palm Ranch, arriving after lamplight time. The little house where the girl was, who “sang and she danced too” in Nacional, was quite gay in the moonlight, with palm shadows over it, with its windows lit up like the small square windows in Christmas cards.

  Dorn did not go to the house at all. At the stable he left his horse, changing to another and having a few words with the stable hand whom he himself had hired.

  “You needn’t say I dropped in,” he said as he mounted again to ride on. “I’ll be back late tonight or early tomorrow morning.”

  Late as was the hour when he rode into little dried-up, dusty Liberty, there on the hotel porch sat Cap’n Jinks in an ancient rocking chair that might have been of equal vintage with himself.

  “Hello, Willie,” he said, removing a short-stemmed black, ill-starred pipe from the corner of his mouth, then promptly sticking it back. Around the pipe stem he added, “I kind of suspected you might be droppin’ in.”

  “Hello, Cap,” said Dorn, stretching his long gaunt frame to get the kinks of fatigue out of it. He looked down curiously into the screwed-up, shrewd old face turned up to his. “What made you look for me?” he asked.

  “Come to see Lorny Kent Number Two, ain’t you?” demanded Jinks. “Or happens she’s Number One?”

  “I heard about her—”

  “So I reckoned you would. An’ nex’ I figgered when once you’d heard, you’d ride along in. Well, well, it’s kind of late, ain’t it? To call on a young, innercent gal like her, I mean. An’ even so, mebbe you’re on time. It’s my bet she ain’t gone to bed yet. Fu’thermore, as the feller says, mebbe she’s got her some comp’ny!”

  Dorn was quick to realize that Jinks wasn’t idly gossiping. Nor had he sat up in his creaking old rocker all this while just to look out into the moonlit road. Dorn glanced at the hotel itself; all was dark save for a weak glimmer in the hall where a lamp, wick turned low, would burn all night. “Who’s her company, Cap?” he asked.

  “Two gents sashayed in here only ten-twenty minutes ago,” said Jinks. “Their spurs was on their heels an’ their guns was hangin’ low, an’ by name they’re Hank Smith an’ Mex Fontana, while by natur’ they’re a couple o’ sheep-killin’ yeller dawgs that goes where their master sends ’em. An’ if I ain’t mistook, they’re visitin’ the new Lorny. Anyhow, I been settin’ here an’ they ain’t come out yet.”

  “Where’s her room?” asked Dorn.

  “Last one down the hall, on your lef’. Better sort of watch how you walk, Will.”

  Dorn strode down the dim, narrow hallway, came to the last door, saw a faint line of light under it, listened for voices, heard nothing and rapped with his left hand. His right was on his gun.

  There was no answer, no sound save that of old Cap’n Jinks’ slow, cautious footfalls following him. Dorn put his hand to the door knob, found no bolt had been shot against entrance, threw the door open and looked in. There was no one there. The room was in the wildest disorder. Bed clothes trailed to the floor, an old wardrobe stood gapingly open and empty; of any sort of girl or her visitors there was no trace save in such haphazard scraps, like leaves blown in a gale from a tree, as remained after hasty departure.

  The window into the stable yard stood wide open; the mosquito-net screening had been torn to listless, drooping shreds. On the floor was one shoe, a slim, frail thing a girl had worn; near it a crumpled scrap of a tiny handkerchief. Dorn noted in an abstracted subconscious sort of way the corner of a sheet of paper thrusting itself into notice from under the warped pine dresser. A chair lay overturned; there was the big dusty imprint of a man’s boot on a corner of the bed counterpane on the floor.

  “Dammit they got her, an’ me I never heard a sound!” Cap’n Jinks was saying, and sounded close to tears. “Out the winder they went with her while I’m squattin’ at the front door.” He came in and began peering and poking around. “What-in-’ell, do you reckon, Will? Who was she an’ why did Mike Bundy want her carted off?”

  Dorn slipped out through the open window and went up and down, around the building, into the stable, to learn what he could. When he returned, having learned nothing except that the horses which Smith and Fontana had ridden were gone, he found Cap’n Jinks staring down at an assortment of trifles he had spread out on the dresser. They were the shoe, the handkerchief, the sheet of paper and something he had raked out from under the bed—a well-worn black leather belt with a big shining silver buckle. He had never a question to ask; he knew that the girl was gone, he knew who had escorted her, through the window and away. But Dorn, already frowning, looked into the puckered old face and demanded sharply:

  “Well, Cap? What’s up?”

  “That there’s a shoe, an’ yon’s a belt with a silver buckle, and yon’s a letter. That’s all that’s lef’ us, Will; the gal an’ all her other belongin’s has went, an’ went clean.”

  He didn’t lift his shrewd old eyes from the articles on the dresser; he seemed at the moment to have no interest in anything else.

  “Who the devil is this girl?” demanded Dorn.

  “Might be she’s Lorny Kent,” sighed old Jinks. “Anyhow this here buckle says L. K., as big as life; an’ this here letter, one that was wrote a year ago, is to ‘My Darling Lorna’ an’ is signed ‘Your Aff. Aunt, Nellie Kent,’ an’ the shoe don’t say nothin’, bein’ like mos’ shoes.” Then he did lift his puzzled eyes to Dorn’s. “Me, I’m keepin’ these trophies o’ the chase, as the sayin’ goes, Will. When young I figgered I’d be a great Nick Carter detective some day. I ain’t never had the chance before. Mebbe it ain’t too late yet.”

  Dorn said impatiently: “Good God, man! If those two devil
s have got this girl—I don’t know what kind of a girl she is, either, but if they’ve got her—”

  “Well, they have, an’ you can tie to that, Willie. What kind is she? Nice gal, I thought her. Yep, they got her, an they got a good safe head start on us. Now jus’ what’n hell you’n me is goin’ to do about it, I dunno. Happens you know?”

  Dorn had to shake his head. No, he didn’t know. And there were a lot of things he didn’t know—but meant to find out.

  CHAPTER XII

  Then came the Boom. For those were the Boom Days. All the great American Southwest swaggered like the youth it was, brave in its first pair of long pants; nothing was too crass for it, nothing too sudden, nothing too big. Black powder was to be packed in everything, was to explode at the hot glance of an eye, was to send up skyrockets and blossom in festoons of fire down the purple skies. Like an explosion Bundy’s Town came into being. Thereafter it grew up like a giant mushroom—toadstool rather, for it was a poisonous sort of monstrous thing. County Line, you were conceived in greed, you were cradled in lust of gold and many other sordid things; what is left of you is now one of the monuments of the West, standing over dead things. And right next door to you, “as the feller says,” as Cap’n Jinks would say, is Halfway!

  The girl at Palm Ranch remained there; she showed a firmness of chin and a steadiness of eye and a capability for taciturnity which were downright amazing for so young and pretty a girl; and it was she who really created Halfway. As it had shown itself to her in visions, it came up out of the checkered squares on the tablecloth and took solid form at the head of a tiny meadow, just out of sight from the ranch house over a hill. She was something of an artist, she had imagination and along with it the ability to create her dream in abiding form.